


when you are here, music is all around

by thesilverwitch



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: 1D Holidaze, Alternate Universe, Holiday Fic Exchange, M/M, Winter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-21
Updated: 2012-12-21
Packaged: 2017-11-21 23:21:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/603171
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesilverwitch/pseuds/thesilverwitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Some people are firm believers that you should never leave your Christmas shopping until the last available minute. Louis Tomlinson is not one of those people.<br/>Against all apparent odds, neither is Liam Payne.</p>
            </blockquote>





	when you are here, music is all around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thilia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thilia/gifts).



> This is for thilia for the 1D Holidaze exchange fest. I hope you enjoy it dear ♥
> 
> Many thanks to all those who listened to my stressed sobs while writing this, you're the best. Merry Christmas everyone x

Some people are firm believers that you should never leave your Christmas shopping until the last available minute.  
  
Louis Tomlinson is not one of those people.  
  
It’s not that he’s lazy per se, it’s just that Louis genuinely enjoys shopping in the overcrowded streets of London City. Call him crazy, loads of people already do, but there’s something about being part of the city blood, something about seeing people all around him with missions and busy thoughts of their own that makes Louis feel important; it makes him feel like he’s part of something big, that he’s not just another nameless stranger no one has ever heard of and no one ever will.  
  
But it’s also part laziness, obviously, although you’d have to be a soon-to-be-dead man to ever catch Louis saying that out loud. Many things aren’t important in this world, but minimal pride certainly is. If you don’t have at least some kind of respect for yourself, hell son, you don’t have anything. That’s what Louis’ mom is always saying and that’s what Louis has found himself thinking at least once a week, ever since he moved to London and discovered that living on noodles is way harder than the tv made it look like.  
  
This is what Louis finds himself thinking now, in fact, as people shove him, left and right, at the same time as they try to get on with their incredibly busy lives. Louis doesn’t mind people like the man who has just pushed him against a bus bench, everyone has bad days and this is London after all, but if they’re not gonna apologize, they can bet their unflattering jeans and ugly sweaters on how they’re getting a shove back.  
  
But not a big shove because Christmas is almost here and Louis is always extra nicer around this time. When he was a kid, Louis was nice because he was afraid Santa would give him a piece of coal if he misbehaved. Now, Louis just enjoys being nice.  
  
It’s pretty hard to be anything but smiles and hugs when there are Christmas lights and red and green decorations everywhere his eyes turn to, reminding him that this is the jolliest time of the year and he should make good use of it.  
  
Christmas is when everyone bundles up together, shares their happiness with others, be it strangers or family or friends, and celebrates the magic of being alive for another year of living and breathing and enjoying life.  
  
At least, that's what Christmas is for Louis -- a chance to be with his family, to be extremely sappy, to do some good and to buy lots and lots of presents.  
  
The last is what Louis is doing at the moment, or at least trying to.  
  
Louis loves crowded streets and the feeling of purpose they give him, but he doesn’t love, in any way whatsoever, queues. Harry tells him this makes him a terrible British person but Louis doesn’t care. Queues are awful. All you do is wait, walk two steps, wait some more and sigh when a baby starts crying -- and a baby always starts crying. Everyone knows they’re not in a proper queue until there’s an infant bawling his eyes out.  
  
The worst part about queues though, in Louis’ extensive knowledge of the topic, is knowing that you have now just began your shopping and that you’re bound to meet a thousand more insufferable waiting lines until a murderous desire begins growing inside of you and you decide to call it a day.  
  
Louis tries not to focus on that.  
  
Instead, as he waits in line at GameStop to buy some cheap Xbox games for his second degree cousins, Louis plays one of his favorite games: creating backstories for the people around him. Harry was the one who told him about this clever way of killing time on a cold Friday night, when they stuck in a queue to get into the club of the season.  
  
They’d made up the stupidest, most ridiculous things they could think of from ‘student at the University of London by day, glamorous stripper by night, vampire by twilight’ to ‘secretly a spy for the Australian government, likes to ride kangaroos on his free time’.  
  
The game is usually more fun when you have someone else with you, but a way to kill time in a queue will always be a way to kill time in a queue and right now, that’s what Louis desperately needs.  
  
He lets his eyes roam the shop and the people around him, trying to find the most interesting looking person for a good start.  
  
The girl with the bright pink hair and pokemon t-shirt catches his eyes. Louis imagines that behind all the vibrant colours and bubbly clothes, there’s a very philosophical girl studying medicine at a top notch university and researching a cure for cancer on her free time. She also enjoys baking cookies that look like seafood and knows how to rap in French. Her mom is a bit of a bitch but her dad is as chill as they come and she loves them both regardless.  
  
The next person Louis creates a backstory for is a bloke near the Nintendo Wii games. His broad shoulders and his shaped arms make it look like he could deadlift a cow, but his nice guy polo shirt and his boy next door haircut take all the menace out of him. Despite the multitude of clothes that the man is wearing, Louis can still tell that he’s hot. Ridiculously, shamelessly, impossibly hot. The sort of hot that makes people weak on their knees and grandmas faint. The sort of hot that would make the Queen blush. The sort of hot that makes Louis want to abandon his precious queue and go up to the man and say anything and everything to get into his pants.  
  
That sort of hot.  
  
Louis is, unfortunately, not crazy enough to approach a stranger like that without at least two daiquiris in his system. If Harry was there with him, Louis would probably be able to do it, not only because Harry has this special power of making everyone around him feel invincible but also because Harry would definitely dare him to do it and if there’s one thing Louis can’t say no to, it’s a good dare.  
  
With no dare to egg him on though, Louis would rather just continue his little game in the privacy of his own mind.  
  
Alright, so, stranger in the polo shirt. Probably goes to some fancy university and studies some bullshit course like ‘extremely liberal arts’ or ‘animal psychology’. All of his tuition is paid by his uber rich parents, giving perfect boy a chance to not lift a finger for a couple more years. He doesn’t smoke but goes completely wild on the weekends, paying shots for everyone and their moms. His name is some stupid, ethnic word his mom saw on a magazine and fell in love with, like Leopold, but everyone calls him Leo because what kind of name is Leopold anyway.  
  
He says to everyone he meets that he’s straight as an arrow but actually, there’s nothing perfect boy loves more than having a cock shoved up his ass. Oh and he goes to the gym twice a week and runs every morning, although this one is not so much as a guess from Louis as reality because there’s no way someone with a body like that doesn’t work out everyday.  
  
Damn, he really is hot.  
  
Louis is trying not to fall in love -- that’d be so sad, he doesn’t even know the guy -- but the more rubbish he makes up in his mind about the extremely good-looking stranger over the Nintendo section, the more he can’t help wondering what it’d be like to have that cock around his lips. Probably really hot.  
  
When the man catches Louis’ eyes and gives him a tiny, curious smile, Louis doesn’t even have time to feel embarrassed as his heart takes a leap out of his mouth and decides to commit suicide.  
  
If Louis thought the guy was hot before, now that he’s seen his smile he’s sure that God exists and that the big guy upstairs sent one of his angels to Earth to spread his hotness among the mere mortals. That’s the only rational explanation for how someone can have the best smile Louis has ever seen, ever. It really is.  
  
Louis is more than thankful that the queue decides to move at that right moment, giving him an excuse to look away and stop acting creepy as hell.  
  
There’s a fine chance that Louis’ most recent crush burns two holes on the back of Louis’ neck with the power of his stare, but since Louis can’t decide if he should be taking the fixated gaze as a compliment or as an insult, he decides to ignore it.  
  
He’s probably thinking Louis is a bit weird anyway, which is fine because Louis is a bit weird, normally it just takes people a while longer to get this.  
  
\- // -  
  
Perfumes are super fascinating stuff.  
  
Except for the part where they absolutely aren’t.  
  
At present moment, Louis is aimlessly browsing through a perfume shop, which shop exactly he has no idea because frankly, they’re all the same. You’ve got your pink bottles for women and you’ve got your blue bottles for men and half of the perfumes smell exactly the same but don’t you dare say that out loud or all the other customers will eat you alive.  
  
Louis’ inability to tell one smell from the other is making him wonder if maybe his nose is broken or if his sense of smell has decided to call it quits because he can’t, for the life of him, tell the difference between a rose fragrance from a petunia fragrance. They smell completely the same.  
  
It’s like this that Louis finds himself trying and failing to figure out the best perfume to buy for his aunt and his mom when he sees the guy from before, who he has now dubbed as ‘Perfect Boy’ inside his head, in a shop across the street.  
  
Perfect Boy is looking at some books in a quiet corner, reading their covers and their backs with such attention that a tiny frown has formed between his eyebrows. He doesn’t appear to have noticed Louis.  
  
Regardless, being the overly dramatic fashionably guy that he is, Louis can’t help thinking that there’s a tiny possibility that Perfect Boy is following him.  
  
It’s a stupid thought, it really is, Perfect Boy has absolutely no reason to be following him, they never met or talked or shared more than an awkward moment in a game shop and-- oh shit, he’s looking Louis’ way.  
  
Now let it be clear that Louis doesn’t shriek. Girls shriek, scared pussycats shriek, children shriek and since Louis is none of these things, he certainly doesn’t shriek. He does let out a tiny yell though.  
  
He also dramatically ducks for cover behind a perfume stand, earning him a stink eye from an older lady next to him. Louis flashes her a bright smile. “Just testing my reaction skills, it’s very important to train these things if you want to stay on top of your mark, you know?”  
  
The old lady turns away without a word. Louis huffs, he’s got bigger problems in his mind besides what old ladies with leopard print bags think of him anyway.  
  
Bigger problems like Perfect Boy definitely seeing him. They’d only shared a look for 0.0067 seconds but Louis is sure there was a tiny smile on the corner of Perfect Boy’s lips and it wasn’t made by a blasted book.  
  
Feeling like his life and his Christmas shopping are spiralling out of control, Louis does the only thing he can think of: call Harry.  
  
“I think I’m being followed?” Is the first thing he says when Harry picks up.  
  
“Followed? By whom?” From across the line, Louis can hear Harry getting up and turning a light on. Lazy shit, isn’t even out of bed yet while Louis is out in the cold. It doesn’t matter that Harry has already bought all of his gifts and is spending the weekend with his family, he’s still lazy in Louis’ eyes.  
  
“By a really hot guy that I might have, might have not stared at like a pervert for five minutes.”  
  
“Why did you stare like a pervert? Your stares are usually pretty levelled.”  
  
Louis kind of wants to ask what the hell does Harry mean by ‘levelled stares’ but it’s Harry and chances are the answer is some kind of deep, philosophical crap Louis doesn’t care for, so whatever.  
  
“I was playing that game of yours, the one where you make up a story for people, only I sort of got carried away and he caught me staring.”  
  
“And now you think he’s following you.”  
  
“He might be.”  
  
A silence hangs over them as Harry thinks and makes low humming sounds. From the corner of his eye Louis can see a store lady walking towards him.  
  
“You said he’s hot?”  
  
“Really hot.”  
  
“Well in that case there’s no problem in him following you, just act normal and wait for him to approach you. Unless you notice he’s crazy, in that case you should call the cops. If he’s not following you then you should probably go talk to him, make him want to follow you so you can tap that ass.”  
  
“As always your advice is a wonder to behold and to receive, Styles.”  
  
“Mucho gusto.”  
  
“That wasn’t a thank you.” Louis says and hangs up because despite sounding like a complete bum, Harry’s advice is actually not that bad and while Louis isn’t very sure on that second part, the first he can easily do.  
  
Act cool and call the cops if things get freaky. Got it.  
  
Louis gets up, brushes nonexistent dust off his jeans and goes back to cluelessly browsing perfume while looking only once every two minutes over to the bookshop to see if Perfect Boy is still there.  
  
The disappointment Louis feels when he looks over for the fifth time and sees Perfect Boy is no longer there is a feeling no one needs to know about.  
  
There’s just something so incredibly pathetic about developing crushes on strangers a couple of days before Christmas. Louis can’t really explain it, but comparing it to the extremely embarrassing photos of his seven-year-old self in a duck outfit for Halloween while all the other kids were dressed as cowboys and astronauts would probably help.  
  
In the midst of feeling as sorry for himself as it is humanly possible, Louis doesn’t even notice the warm body next to him browsing sea-inspired perfumes until it asks.  
  
“Do you know anything about perfume?”  
  
Louis looks to his left, and slightly upwards, to find Perfect Boy standing right by his side with two boxes of women perfume in his hands and an anguished look on his face.  
  
“No?”  
  
“Damn. Neither do I and the ladies in this store scare the crap out of me.” Perfect Boy says while looking at the shop workers at the counter, who Louis is pretty sure were all watching them before they turned away and decided they should all fix the same stand.  
  
The next words come out of Louis’ mouth before he’s even aware that’s he’s saying them. Louis blames it on the comedy movies marathon he and Harry did last weekend. “Ja feel my friend, ja feel.”  
  
“21 Jump Street?” Perfect Boy asks and Louis is thankful that there’s an amused smile on his face instead of a say, extremely creeped out look.  
  
“You got it.”  
  
“I’m Liam, by the way.” Perfect Boy says and the rich boy image Louis had created about him dissolves into dust just like that. No decent posh mother would give her son a name like Liam, it isn’t posh enough.  
  
“Louis.” He says and then decides to add something before an awkward silence settles between them and kills the mood and makes Liam hate him forever and curses Louis’ unborn first child.  
  
“So, Liam, what brings you to a perfume shop ten days before Christmas? Wait, don’t tell me, let me guess. Humm, forgotten gifts for an inlaw you don’t really care for but have to put up with anyway?”  
  
“Ah! Almost, except it’s for my sister, who I very much like and who asked me to buy her a perfume that smells like the sea, only they’ve got ten of those and I don’t know which to choose...”  
  
Louis goes to pat Liam on the back so they can share a straight-out-of-a-Hollywood-movie moment but then remembers that he literally just met the guy and maybe he should keep the physical touching to the minimum, for now at least.  
  
“What about you?” Liam asks.  
  
“Same thing, except I don’t have any indications.” Liam nods solemnly, like they’re sharing some sort of grave secret and Louis thinks ‘cute’ before he thinks ‘how is he a real human being’.  
  
In the end, it’s Louis who says, “maybe we should call for help? I don’t know about you, but I’ve got a terrible sense of smell and I’d hate to get my mom a shitty perfume.”  
  
They look at the shop clerks at the same time, both with the same look of dread in their faces that makes Louis laugh before he decides personal space is for suckers and claps Liam on the back like he wanted to. “I’ll get them.”  
  
The ladies at the store are actually quite useful and not at all scary and Louis ends up with two not too expensive perfumes, lots of reassurances that they smell fantastic and two winks from people who think they know what goes on behind closed doors.  
  
Louis kind of wishes they were right.  
  
“I have to go to Harrod’s next.” Louis says and it’s stupid to hope that Liam is going there too, yes, Louis knows that very well, thank you, but it’s not stupid to hope for the chance of getting Liam to smile at him more and maybe flex his muscles. That’s not stupid at all.  
  
“I don’t have to go there next but... I could go with you? If you want to, of course.”  
  
And Louis would cry out ‘yes, yes, please god yes’ but even with two daiquiris in his blood stream that would still be a bit too much, so he plays it cool instead and smiles and says he’d love the company.  
  
\- // -  
  
It turns out that Liam is an extremely organized person. Or at least he is compared to Louis.  
  
For one, he has a list with the names of everyone he needs to buy a present for, followed by possible gifts, written in different colours depending on their degree of certainty. Red is for specific gifts, blue for suggestions that can be changed if something better is found and green is for general interests of the person. It’s all very impressing to Louis, who has a very vague idea of what to buy and a mental list with the words ‘cousins, aunts, sisters’ on who to buy gifts for.  
  
It’s alright though because for some mystifying reason, Liam finds Louis’ lack of organizing skills not only fascinating but also sort of cute.  
  
‘Cute’ is not is not the exact word used by Liam, but in the same way that a picture says a thousand words, the adorable, puppy look on Liam’s face as he listened to Louis talk said what his words failed to mention. There aren’t many people out there anymore whose faces are open books, but if he had to, Louis would bet twenty five quid and his favorite wool sweater that Liam is one of those people.  
  
As their shopping adventures continues, Louis is more and more sure of this, getting to watch a whole range of emotions flicker through Liam’s face as easily as he could watch America’s Next Top Model on tv.  
  
Liam finds reindeer horns somewhere and puts them on while Louis is looking away, getting a bright laugh from Louis that has him in stitches.  
  
“You look adorable.” Louis says and wishes he add Liam added on facebook so he could take a picture and post it for the world to see.  
  
“Thank you.” Liam says. He’s blushing underneath his red and gold scarf but Louis can’t tell if it’s from embarrassment or from the heat. He reckons both.  
  
“Want a Santa hat?” Liam holds out a red and white hat and Louis wonders where the hell he found them but doesn’t question it, just takes it out of Liam’s hand with a big smile and puts it on his head.  
  
“How do I look?”  
  
“Very lovely.”  
  
Louis’ blush isn’t from the heat.  
  
Louis buys the Pitch Perfect DVD for Harry because everyone loves Pitch Perfect and the people who don’t love Pitch Perfect are wrong and Liam gives him the weirdest look when he hears Louis says this.  
  
“So I’m wrong then?” Liam asks.  
  
“You don’t like ‘Pitch Perfect’?”  
  
“Haven’t seen it yet.”  
  
“Well in that case,” Louis says as he picks up another copy of the DVD. “consider this your early Christmas present.”  
  
Liam stares at Louis completely dumbfounded before he splutters back into activity and says one of the most ridiculous things Louis’ ever heard from an almost perfect stranger.  
  
“But I haven’t got anything for you.”  
  
“That’s alright, you can buy me something later.” Louis says with his best cheeky smile.  
  
Liam looks like he wants to argue but isn’t given a chance when Louis starts walking away towards the the counter. “C’mon, I still need to buy some candy for my sisters.”  
  
Minutes later, Louis is delighted to find Liam is not so perfect after all when Ex-Perfect Boy says his favorite candy is chocolate toffee. Louis manages to contain the urge of blowing Liam a raspberry and calling him a loser, but it’s a close shot.  
  
Everyone knows the best candy are the long ones that look like a rainbow and make your tongue feel like it’s just been in a tiny, private rave of its own. Not to mention you get psychedelic puke if you eat too much of it, which is on a whole new scale of disgustingly awesome.  
  
“Chocolate toffee is delicious!” Liam argues when they’re finally leaving Harrod’s. Liam is having difficulty eating his stupid candy with both his arms full of bags and Louis can’t help feeling a snug appreciation at how eating rainbow sugar is way easier compared to the effort of lifting each individual piece of chocolate.  
  
“Chocolate toffee is a wanker. Look at it’s name! Toffee! Pfff, thinks it’s too fancy to be called caramel... It’s ridiculous Liam, ri-di-cu-lous.”  
  
“Well they couldn’t just call it chocolate caramel, could they? That’d be stu-pid.” Liam leans in close to Louis’ face as he spits out the last syllables, angry frown settled between his eyebrows before the person it belongs to dissolves into giggles, followed closely by Louis’ own laughing.  
  
“Chocolate caramel...” Louis says, “god, that sounds bloody disgusting.”  
  
The laughter takes a while to fade away completely, but when it does Liam and Louis are left staring at each other with puffed red cheeks and happy, cracked smiles. Every two seconds someone bumps into one of them as they hurry by but Louis pays them no mind. Liam’s smile is too gorgeous to look away from.  
  
“I still-- I’ve still got some stuff to buy.” Liam says and Louis can’t tell if it’s an invitation or a goodbye, so he takes his chances and asks the name of the next stores in Liam’s list but they’re all completely out of Louis’ way, who still has three shops to hit before he can call it a day.  
  
“Oh.” Liam says, “I guess this is goodbye then, right?”  
  
Every cell in Louis’ body is shouting for him to say ‘no, no, no’ but the words don’t come out. Nothing does, in fact. Louis just nods and smiles and his eyes don’t tear up because that’d be silly, he barely knows the guy, there’s no logical reason to be upset.  
  
And yet, Louis still feels like he’s been punched in the gut and fuck, it hurts.  
  
Liam starts walking away and then Louis starts walking away and they wave a little at each other before they both turn to their respective paths.  
  
Louis takes about five steps before he spots a group of carol singers in the street corner. The sight if like a painful slap to Louis’ memory, which jump starts and makes Louis’ leg run the opposite way they were heading before Louis is even one hundred percent aware of what he’s doing.  
  
“Wait! Liam! Wait!”  
  
A couple of people turn to look at Louis, dumb shits, as if any of them looked half as good to be called Liam aka Perfect Boy. When the right person does turn though, Louis practically collapses, not from happiness but from exhaustion. PE had never been Louis’ thing, never.  
  
“Your DVD, you forgot your DVD.” Is all Louis manages to say before he has to lean against the nearest wall and get his bearings back together. He’d forgotten how much running sucked.  
  
For the first time since he met Liam, Louis can’t decipher the look on Liam’s face as he looks at the DVD and then smiles at Louis with the corners of his mouth pinched. “Thank you Louis.”  
  
“No problem.” They smile at each other one more time before parting their aways once again.  
  
This time, when the second slap hits Louis’ brain, he’s too far away to go back looking for Liam, which only makes everything worse.  
  
It’s one of Louis’ worse faults -- he’s amazing at picking up signs and hints on other people’s love lives, but when it comes to his own he’s as blind as a bat.  
  
This explains why it never occurred to Louis, not even for one tiny moment, to realize Liam might have been interested in Louis as a whole instead of just interested in Louis’, admittedly delightful, company for Christmas shopping.  
  
The second hit to his brain is not actually so much as a slap, as a really goddamn hard kick in the nuts, which in turn hit the brain by some kind of physical association. It should have been obvious that Louis was supposed to have asked Liam for his number at some point in their goodbye and somehow, Louis missed it.  
  
\-- // --  
  
When Louis is done with all of his shopping, he decides to reward his efforts and his broken heart with a mocha coffee from starbucks and two chocolate chip cookies, also known as sugar bombs. Why? Because he’s a grown man with money, that’s why.  
  
Louis is on his, hopefully, last queue of the day, minding his own business and eyeing the muffins on the counter when a warm hand settles on his shoulder. He’s prepared to see an elderly woman asking him something about the quality of Starbuck’s soy milk or somebody needing to cut in line because they’ve got something super, hiper, mega important to do.  
  
He’s not prepared to see Liam wearing a smile brighter than the sun.  
  
“Hello, fancy seeing you here. This is what? Third time we’ve met. Must be fate.” Liam says and Louis is like, almost totally sure it’s supposed to be a joke and he’s supposed to laugh but his brain is suddenly finding it very hard to operate the rest of Louis’ body so all Louis manages to get out is a strangled.  
  
“Hi.”  
  
“Hello.” Liam says again. His smile becomes a bit warmer with soft crinkles around his pinched eyes and dimples on his cheeks and Louis falls a little more in love with him, just like that. “How did the rest of your shopping go?”  
  
“Pretty good, I think? Bought something nice for everyone I could think of and one or two emergencies gifts in case I forgot someone.”  
  
“Emergency gifts?”  
  
“You never know when a fourth degree cousin might randomly pop by with a present for you and everyone else! In war you’ve got to be prepared, dear Liam.”  
  
“I thought Christmas was a time of love and gratitude.”  
  
“It is for the most part, but not with fourth degree cousins. With those it’s always war. It’s not about reminding them that you didn’t forget to buy a gift, it’s about sending message.”  
  
Liam lets out a low hum of approval from the back of his throat. “You’re like a taller, pinker and cuter version of Yoda.”  
  
“You think I’m cute? Shucks Liam, you’re a real gentleman.”  
  
Liam punches him lightly on the arm as his cheeks burn red. This time Louis is sure he’s not blushing from the heat and he feels far prouder than he should for making Liam blush.  
  
“Liam Payne!” A voice calls from the far end of the counter and Liam steps forward to pick up his order while Louis realizes that they’re no longer in the queue to buy drinks. Huh. That’s weird.  
  
“Here, your Christmas present.” Liam hands Louis a big, steaming cup of hot chocolate and a bag full of delicious treats.  
  
It’s now Louis turn to stare dumbfounded as the mocha burns the surface of his fingers. “How did you know I wanted a mocha?” He ends up asking, amazed and squealing with inside joy. Liam just shrugs and takes a sip of his drink.  
  
“Seemed like your sort of drink.”  
  
“It is, thank you.” And there it is, Liam’s smile again, too good and too sweet and too bright for Louis’ weak brain to handle.  
  
There’s no need to look around Starbucks to know the only available seating spaces are on the sticky floor, so they don’t bother. Liam, acting a little bit like Louis’ personal Jesus, opens a path for them in the sea of people cramping the coffee shop and it doesn’t take them more than two minutes to reach fresh air, where a nice surprise is waiting for them.  
  
“Hey, it’s snowing.”  
  
“It is.” Louis says. He’s always loved seeing snow fall. There’s something magical about it, something nobody can really explain. It captures you and holds your breath and makes you want to scream and dance and laugh until your toes are freezing cold and your nose is bright red.  
  
Louis is watching the snow fall quietly to the ground when he feels the tip of Liam’s warm fingers touch his nearly frozen ones for a tiny second before an even warmer hand wraps around them and pulls Louis just the tiniest fraction closer.  
  
Some people would be offended by such a presumptions act and pull their hand away as they expressed their indignity.  
  
Louis Tomlinson is not one of those people.  
  
“C’mon, let’s find a place where we can have a snowball fight.”


End file.
